THINGS GET WORSE as the day goes on. Colonel Phelps’ son returns from the shop, and the Colonel manages at last to feed the rest of Bowra’s party, but not before Sergeant Kemp and his men have left the house and walked to a cabin a few hundred yards further down the road and have beaten and dragged from the cabin the young Rasta named Rubber, who is Terron’s friend and, until today, his partner in the cultivation of about five acres of ganja plants. This is not, however, why they haul Rubber out to the road and crack his skull with the butts of their shotguns, bind his hands and tie an inch-thick length of Manila rope around his neck and lead him like a captured animal back to their Land Cruiser in front of Colonel Phelps’ house. No, they take Rubber because he is well known in town, especially now, when tonight and tomorrow he will be operating one of the two diesel generators and sound systems in Nyamkopong. By making a show of capturing and controlling Rubber, the police can send a message to the people of the town. It says: Behave yourselves in the next few days. We are in charge.
To his guests, Colonel Phelps merely says, The Rasta youths are troublesome here. That one maybe stole something in Maggotty. You never know. You just never know.
Sickened, the Rasta and Johnny leave for the Rasta’s cabin, where, wordless, they fall down on the mattress that practically fills the cabin and immediately leap into sleep. The Rasta’s woman and children tiptoe around the sleeping men, and when one of Mr. Mann’s grandsons comes to tell the American and Terron that Mr. Mann would like to meet and talk with his Gordon Hall brethren, the woman sends him away, crossly instructing the boy to inform his grandfather that Terron and the American have been away in Montego Bay and Kingston on important American business and have just got back from driving all night and are now sleeping. And besides, she never heard of any Gordon Hall brethren anyhow. The boy shrugs his shoulders and leaves.
All day long the weather too is dismal. It rains steadily, heavily, falling straight down in ropes. After Sergeant Kemp and his men have carted Rubber off to Maggotty, Bowra and Harris berate Colonel Phelps for more than an hour, until, disgusted with the man, they stalk from his house and go looking for Johnny’s van. The others—Charles, the Captain, Gondo, Pie, Steve, and the two women—have already found the vehicle where Johnny parked it, next to Terron’s cabin, and they have all crawled wetly inside and, in various, cramped postures, have gone to sleep. When Bowra and Harris arrive, there is no more room for them in the van, so they step out of the rain into Terron’s cabin and flop onto the mattress next to Johnny and the Rasta. At this point, despite the downpour, Terron’s woman gathers her brood and heads for an aunt’s house down the road.
Around noon they start to wake. The rain is still coming down, and the sky is low, heavy and gray. Outside the cabin the ground is squishy with red mud. Johnny stands and peers out the door and sees that the others are apparently still sleeping in the van. Then stretching, yanking and scratching at his clothing, which clings to him at the crotch and under his arms, he finally sighs heavily, as if remembering a painful obligation, and asks the Rasta what they should do now.
The Rasta laughs. He is sitting on the edge of the bed, barefoot and shirtless.
“What’s funny?” Johnny asks glumly from the door.
The huge Bowra, like an overturned green boat, lies on his back crossways on the bed, his hands behind his head, staring somberly at the underside of the tin roof, as if studying the progress of an ant. Next to him lies Harris, on his side and propped on an elbow, deep in pipe-smoking thought and, for once, silent and with no opinion.
The Rasta goes on laughing, which is highly unusual. Terron never laughs. He smiles sometimes, but that’s all. He’s a serious man.
What’s funny? Johnny asks him again, crossing around him in the cramped, cluttered space to the small, square window on the opposite side of the room. He stares out the window at the broad, sopped leaves of a banana tree. Then the acrid smell of urine drifts up to him from the muddy ground just beyond, and he wrinkles his nose and steps back.
When he turns around, the Rasta is building a spliff and smiling broadly, as if at a suddenly remembered joke. No, really, Terron, what’s so funny? This whole thing was supposed to be such a big deal, but it’s all turned out like shit. You know that.
Heh, heh, heh, the Rasta chuckles. Now we know, he says with a sly expression on his long face. Now we know. Now we know.
Know what?
We know who is the wizard of Oz.
Unsmiling, Johnny crosses slowly to the door. You said you never saw that movie. A wizard is a wizard, you told me.
That doesn’t mean one or two of the wizards can’t be fakes. Phonies. Oh no, the Rasta explained, just because a man’s a fake doesn’t mean he can’t also be a wizard. And this fake here, this Martin Luther Phelps, he’s the wizard of Oz. Understand?
Johnny understands. He takes a hit off the Rasta’s spliff. Then he asks Bowra and Harris what they want him to do now.
Take me to see your Mr. Mann, the Colonel orders.
Harris starts to say something, evidently thinks better of it and instead merely shrugs his shoulders. He’s only the mouth-man. The Colonel is the Colonel.
Standing, the Colonel brushes off his suit and squares his pith helmet. Get the others out here, he says to Harris, and Harris scrambles out the door into the rain. Banging on the car windows, he rouses the others and starts shouting and gesturing for them to leave the car and come to the cabin.
We can drive over, Johnny suggests. No sense getting wet. It’s a ways from here.
No. We’ll walk.
Johnny looks at the Rasta, and they both, like Harris, shrug their shoulders helplessly. The Colonel is the Colonel.
By the time Bowra exits from the tiny cabin, the others have left the shelter of the van and have angled toward the cabin door, as if hoping to enter and get out of the rain. But the big man blocks them at the door and they are forced to stand and listen. The American and his friend listen from inside the cabin.
We are going to walk through this city of Nyamkopong, he says grimly. We have seen their Colonel and we have seen how he is with the police from outside. We will see a little more of this city and then we will leave it.
The others somberly nod agreement, and as the Colonel strides to the road in front of the cabin, his people fall in behind him. Johnny, get up here! he commands. Rasta, you too! and the American and his friend jog to the front.
The road is deserted, mucky, crisscrossed with rivulets darting like snakes for the gutters. No one calls out or hails the group until the marchers reach the center of the town, where a pair of shops face each other across the road. From the dark shelter of the shops come the cries of a few who recognize the American and who are friends of the Rasta. Oy, oy, oy, one heart, one love! they cry. Irie, Rasta! Love, man. Dread, Rasta!
But no one acknowledges the cries. They simply march along in the rain, slogging through the mud, past the shops, turning right and down a grassy lane to a blue house at the end where the hand-lettered sign over the door proclaims, TRELAWNY TOWN 1738–39, and a small spotted dog stands at the doorway and barks furiously at the strangers.
After a few moments, while they stand outside in the downpour, Mr. Mann’s wife appears at the door. The American steps forward and, putting on a cheerful face, asks her where her husband is. An important man wants to meet him, he adds.
The tiny old woman crossly points with her chin back down the lane. “Look in one of the shops if you want him,” she suggests and abruptly turns and goes in, slamming the door behind her.
Smiling weakly, the American tells Bowra that Mr. Mann must be in one of the shops they just passed. Let’s go have a drink with him, he urges. Then he adds, He must not have been told you were coming today. Not so early anyhow. Something…
For a second the others glare at him. Even the Rasta gives him a hard look, and then they turn and slog back the way they just came, leaving him to run and catch up.
Mr. Mann is at the second of the two shops. At the first, when the American asked for him, the proprietor had merely pointed in silence across the street to his competitor’s shop, then had gone quickly to a hushed conversation with an old woman at the counter.
At the second shop, dark as a cave, Mr. Mann is seated at the far end before a domino table, playing an idle two-handed game with another old man. At the sight of the American and behind him the Rasta and the entourage from Gordon Hall, all of them sopping wet and scowling as they crowd into the place, Mr. Mann rises from his chair and comes quickly to embrace the white man with affection.
Johnny makes the introductions, his voice soft with fatigue, then steps away to the bar where three or four local youths with dreadlocks, Natty Dreads, have been standing and talking with the barman. Apparently penniless and loitering here inside because of the rain, they are not drinking. One of them, the slender, sweet-faced boy named Benjie, is a true Rasta and will not drink alcoholic beverages anyhow. He refuses even to wear leather or eat anything that doesn’t grow above or below ground. Strictly Ital, man.
Drinks for everyone, Johnny tells the barman, who sets out two half pints of white rum and a dozen glasses. Behind Johnny and the youths at the bar, in an almost British accent, Mr. Mann is talking loudly in his public way. With polite and elaborate circumlocutions, he expresses his delight at meeting the famous Colonel Bowra of the Gordon Hall Maroons, and though his beloved American son had some time ago told him that the people of Gordon Hall would send a delegation to Nyamkopong for the celebration, he himself did not dare believe it, for he was aware of the great distance that lay between the two towns, having once traveled to Kingston himself for the Queen’s jubilee, there to dance the old African dances in honor of Her Majesty’s visit to the island of Jamaica.
Confronted by this tiny, eloquent man, whose blue and brown eyes match his own, Bowra backs off a step and grimly swells his bulk. With his thick arms folded across his chest, he resembles a tree, and, after a second of silence, he simply grunts down at Mr. Mann, which brings an even wider smile to the little man’s face and yet another ornate speech from his mouth, this time a swift recounting of their common Maroon heritage, their common descent from the grand chieftain Cudjoe here in the west and his sister the great African sorcerer Nonny in the east and their shared one-hundred-year war against the British slavemasters, for, as is well known among all the peoples of the civilized world, he concludes, we the Maroons are the heart of Jamaica.
Again, Bowra’s reaction is to huff himself up and utter a grunt. And Mr. Mann smiles and launches a third speech, this time one that welcomes the delegation from Gordon Hall to Nyamkopong and leads to a courteous and precisely framed question as to whether they have been made comfortable by Colonel Martin Luther Phelps? In the manner befitting your high offices and emoluments and the extraordinary occasion of your visit, he adds, still smiling innocently at the big man.
At the bar, the American almost chokes on his drink, and Harris whips around angrily, while the others look at each other and sneer. The Rasta, who has been standing at the door smoking a spliff and studying the rain, turns and watches. For several long seconds the gloomy, dark room is silent. Then Bowra explodes.
This Colonel of theirs, this Martin Luther Phelps they call a Colonel, this man is a whore to Babylon! This whore who calls himself a Colonel feeds the police while his brother Maroons go hungry! This man who calls himself a Maroon smiles and bows and licks the hand that beats him!
Mr. Mann has raised his eyebrows in what could barely pass for surprise in an amateur theatrical production. Then, shaking his head from side to side in a show of sympathy, he takes Bowra’s hands in his and leads the big man to the bar, nudges a glass to him, and picks one up for himself. The man is a monkey, he says almost sweetly to Bowra. They raise their glasses, dribble a bit onto the ground, and empty them.
How can you have a man like that one stand forth as your Colonel? Harris wants to know.
Kill him, says Charles.
Chop him up, Pie suggests.
The youths, who up to now have merely been standing in out of the rain, have brightened considerably and are elbowing each other and casting knowing looks at the barman.
Bowra takes in the three boys slowly. They are in their late teens and, though dreadlocked, are farmers, dressed in dirty T-shirts and mud-spattered pants and wearing knee-high rubber boots. All three are carrying machetes. You! he says, and they suddenly dissolve their grins and stare at him. How is it that you let such a man stand forth as your Colonel?
They smile sheepishly and shrug their shoulders.
Count! he orders.
They don’t understand and look at one another, puzzled.
Count! Don’t you know how to count? Don’t you know your numbers?
One of the three nods.
Then count!
The one who nodded, Benjie, gulps and begins. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight…
Enough!
Mr. Mann has been following the exchange between Bowra and the boys carefully and with a sober expression on his face. When Bowra is clearly about to speak to them again, the smaller man places a hand on his arm and stops him, although Bowra does not take his eyes away from the gaze of the boys. Before you go any further, he says, in a light but quite serious voice, as if he were speaking to someone he did not wish to alarm, Yes, before you go on with these lovely young men, let me tell you a story. Very briefly. An interesting story that might lead you to an understanding of our life here in Nyamkopong.
By keeping his voice moving, he keeps Bowra from interrupting as he proceeds to tell a story about a man who left his beautiful wife and young son and went to work in Cuba where the United States Marines taught him to be a welder in a school they ran there at Guantanamo Bay. The man worked in Cuba for seven years, and when it came time for him to return to Jamaica, he drew all his savings from the bank, over three thousand dollars, and packed his suitcase. On his way to the airport for the ride home to Jamaica, he stopped into a bar for a last drink with a friend, and his friend, an old and wise Cuban man, told him about a dream he’d had that night before. In the dream the Jamaican man went home to discover that his wife had a new boy friend living with her and that she and her new boy friend got together and killed the man and kept the money he had been saving all these seven years in Cuba.
The Jamaican man laughed and said good-bye and went on his way. But when he got back to Jamaica, he started to remember his friend’s dream, and by the time he got to his village way up in the hills, he was a very worried man. It was early in the morning when he arrived at his house, for he had been traveling all night, and when he opened the door of his house and walked in, no one was up yet. Very quietly, he looked into the room where their bed had always been, and he saw his wife, as beautiful as before, lying asleep. One of her large breasts had fallen from her dress, and he looked at her with all his old feelings. Then he realized with horror that lying next to her was a handsome young man, and he knew that the Cuban’s dream had been right about everything. To save his money from them, he pulled out his knife and stabbed first the young man and then his wife. And then, with shock, as he looked down at the bloody bed, he realized that the young man was his own son, probably the same age as these boys here before us, who may well still sometimes sleep with their Mommies when they have no other place to go to sleep. Am I right, boys? he asks the three.
They nod, almost with gratitude, and turn away.
Bowra glares down at the old man, who smiles peacefully back.
He’s yours, then, this Colonel you call a monkey. Bowra turns to his brother the Captain and Harris. Where’s Johnny? Where is he? Johnny!
The group steps away from the bar and uncovers the American standing at the end. His eyes are dark with fatigue. Here, he says in a low voice.
Johnny, we’re ready to leave! Get your vehicle! he commands.
Now?
Now.
But … the celebration… It’s not come yet.
Nothing here to celebrate.
The past, says Mr. Mann, almost to himself.
Nothing here to celebrate, Bowra repeats.
All right, I’ll bring the car around. The American is exhausted and trudges toward the door and into the rain outside as if he were pulling a cart loaded with stone. The Rasta, Terron, has already gone on ahead.